Contractor cleans up in record time
July 1st 2005 An electric scissor lift from Nationwide Access has enabled cleaning contractor PSJ Services to complete a two-week cleaning job in just three days. Rhinefield House Hotel, near Brockenhurst in Hampshire employed PSJ Services to clean its Grand Hall, an 11m high Victorian hall decorated with ornate mouldings and floor-to-ceiling oak panelling.
Maintenance of the Grand Hall which dates back to 1887 had previously been carried out by hotel staff using ladders, step ladders and trestles to reach the cornices and ceiling. Besides being a potentially risky operation, this method of cleaning the Grand Hall never took less than two weeks to complete.
But with a season crammed full with weddings and conferences, a two-week shutdown was out of the question.
The only option was to bring in a professional cleaning contractor, so Rhinefield House contacted PSJ Services. “We were given five days to complete the task”, says PSJ director Steve Linnegar. “And it was obvious that the biggest challenge was going to be the high level access”.
Luckily, having visited Nationwide Access’ stand at last year’s Cleaning Show, Linnegar knew that he could do the job with the help of powered access equipment.
However, it was not just vertical access that posed a problem.
Access to the Grand Hall was very restricted and any machine would have to enter the building via the ornate main steps. It would then have to negotiate the small entrance lobby and pass through a 1.2m wide carved wooden doorway to enter the Grand Hall. Weight was another consideration as, once inside, the machine would be sitting on the original suspended timber floor.
Linnegar contacted Nationwide’s Southampton depot and, following a site visit, it was agreed that the company’s 3246 scissor lift was the only suitable machine. With a lift height of 11.7m, the 3246 could reach every corner of the Hall with ease. Another advantage of the 3246 was that, being electricallyoperated, there was no engine noise and no exhaust emissions, an important consideration when working indoors.
Although the 3246, at only 1.14m wide, is a very narrow machine it had to be absolutely square to the 1.2m doorway in order to pass through without touching the sides.
Even then, getting the scissor lift through the doorway was no easy task,” adds Linnegar. “We had to make a few on-the-spot adjustments to the machine to enable it to miss a couple of projecting wooden scallops.” Once inside the Grand Hall, the 3246 could be elevated to reach every part of the 15.8m long, 7.5m wide room. Although a compact machine when retracted, the 3246 has a generous 2.4 sq m platform which gave PSJ staff plenty of room to stow their cleaning materials without restricting their movement on the platform.
“Once we were in, the cleaning itself was very straightforward and no more difficult than working at ground level,” says Linnegar. And although PSJ Services had been given just five days to complete the contract, the work was actually done in only three.
“We were all amazed at how quick and easy the scissor lift made this contract. It might be more expensive to hire than ladders and scaffolding, but when you consider the time it saves there’s no doubt that it’s cheaper in the long run,” says Linnegar. More articles from Nationwide Access Limited: | 
